A quick, and sad, update on the 2 queen cells. On Saturday, I had separated each queen cell into her own section of the TBH with comb and bees. After returning home from work that evening, the bees had abandoned one queen cell, so I put both queen cells back in the main hive ( I really dont have enough bees to make 2 splits). I decided that Sunday after work, I would move one of the queen cells to a mini mating nuc to await her hatching. But when I got into the hive on Sunday evening, the bees were chewing open the still capped queen cells. Apparently, they decided that the dud queen that hatched out in Feb (and isnt laying any eggs) will run the colony. Unfortunately, that has left me without an egg-laying queen. I pulled the dud queen on Sunday and put her in my observation hive and will look in the main hive in a few days to see if there were any eggs that the bees could turn into emergency queen cells. I really doubt there are any viable. Ive called the supplier out in CA where I have an order in for 2 queens, and they are going to try and get my order shipped out in the next few weeks. Hope the hive can sustain itself for that long. This has really put a crimp in my Plan Bee for 2014 to have 4 robust hives. But thats how things go with honeybees :-)
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 01:32:11 +0000
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